In the field of computing, program execution branch decisions are frequently made based on the result of a previous computation. A typical computer has an arithmetic logic unit (ALU) which performs mathematical operations on two or more "N" bit operands where "N" represents the total number of bits per operand. It will also be convenient to refer to the "n"th bit where "n" is an index variable whose value is between 0 and N-1, inclusive. A typical computation result upon which branching decisions are made is the ALU=0 condition. Many times a branch will be made if the result of a computation is zero, otherwise program execution will continue at the next command, or vice versa. Heretofore in this field, tests for arithmetic computation results relied upon the actual computation results.